Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Starring Tom Hiddleston (Loki Variant L1130), Sophie Di Martino (Sylvie), Owen Wilson (Mobius / Don), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Ravonna Renslayer), Wunmi Mosaku (Hunter B-15 / Doctor Willis), Tara Strong (the voice of Miss Minutes), Eugene Cordero (Casey / Frank), Ke Huy Quan (OB / Dr AD Doug), Rafael Casal (Hunter X-5 / Brad Wolfe), Kate Dickie (General Dox), and Liz Carr (Judge Gamble) with Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely / He Who Remains
Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead with Dan DeLeeuw and Kasra Farahani
A Kevin Feige Production
Music By Natalie Holt
Distributed by Disney Platform Distribution
Number of Episodes: 6
Initial Streaming: October 5, 2023-November 9, 2023
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Fun Loki: Season Two Facts
The Second Season of Loki was announced during the credits of Loki: Season One
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead were hired by Marvel Studios to work on Loki: Season Two in February of 2022. The duo previously worked with Marvel Studios during the production of Moon Knight, which they directed two episodes of (Summon the Suit and The Tomb). Writer Eric Martin meanwhile was brought back to write most of the Second Season of Loki after writing the Season One episodes The Nexus Event and For All Time. Always.
Since debuting as He Who Remains in Loki: Season One, actor Jonathan Majors has gone on to play several Variants of Kang the Conqueror within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Majors voiced the fictitious Timekeepers in Loki: Season One in addition to portraying He Who Remains. The He Who Remains character appeared to meet His end at the hands of the Loki Variant known as Sylvie in the Season One finale when she stabbed him to death at the Citadel at the End of Time, but with His dying words, the Kang Variant promised that upon His death, countless Variants of Himself would arise to threaten the Multiverse that He insisted would infinitely expand in the event that the Sacred Timeline was exposed. One such Variant did in fact appear in 2023’s Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania which saw Majors portray the militant Kang the Conqueror; a Kang Variant that had been banished to the Quantum Realm by other Kang Variants for his actions during the previous Multiversal War that He Who Remains eventually ended. This version of Kang appeared to meet his end at the hands of Scott Lang / Ant-Man and Hope Van Dyne / The Wasp when he was knocked into his own Multiversal Engine Core by the 616-Universe heroes. From there, Majors portrayed several more versions of Kang in the credits, including but not limited to three primary Variants known as Pharaoh Rama-Tut, The Centurian, and Immortus. Though Kang the Conqueror lost in Quantumania, the threat of these other Kang Variants loomed large over the MCU and its Multiverse Saga as Loki: Season Two was released on Disney+.
However, the future of Jonathan Majors as Kang within the MCU became in doubt in early-2023 when he was involved in what has been described as a domestic violence incident with his girlfriend at the time. Many observers called for Majors to be recast by Marvel Studios, even before his trial. At the time of his arrest, Majors had already filmed his scenes for Loki: Season Two, as the show wrapped filming in October-2022, and a decision was made by the powers-that-be at Disney and Marvel Studios to present the series as it was originally intended to be seen, complete with Majors reprising his role as He Who Remains as well a new role as the Kang Variant known as Victor Timely.
The Multiverse Saga was intended to revolve around Jonathan Majors and his Kang Variants as the story played itself it, with the fifth Avengers movie announced by Marvel Studios at the 2022 San Diego Comic Con under the title: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. However, Majors’ future as the character remained uncertain within the fandom due to his pending trial and both the poor critical reception and subsequent poor box office performance of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. A lot of curiosity therefore surrounded Loki: Season Two as MCU fans were eager to not only see how the story played itself out, but also how it would affect the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically as it relates to the Kang character.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Understanding Time Travel within the MCU Heading into Loki: Season Two
Avengers: Endgame introduced the concept of time travel into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Time Travel was a significant plot device that had widespread ramifications on not just Avengers: Endgame, but on the entire MCU. The filmmakers took an approach to Time Travel that has been theorized within Quantum Mechanics in the “Many Worlds Theory.” This is not a familiar approach for general moviegoers, as Time Travel has been traditionally approached from a very different perspective in most films that utilize the plot device. In Endgame, popular theories such as “The Grandfather Paradox” do not apply, because you can’t go to back to the past and change your future, because your future has already happened. This is why The Avengers can’t simply travel back through time and kill baby Thanos before he ever grows up as Rhodey suggests in the film. Time Travel (at least in Avengers: Endgame) does not work that way. By doing that, The Avengers would merely kill that timeline’s Thanos and spare that timeline Thanos’ wrath. Their timeline would remain the same.
This is where the “Many Worlds” angle comes in, and what this theory suggests is that the Universe exists in a state of constant expansion in which it is continually splitting (or branching off) into extensions that exist initially as duplicate Parallel Universes that evolve into a range of either very similar or very different New Realities. These Universes comprise what some have labeled the “Multiverse.”
The concept of the Multiverse is not new to comic book readers, and it has been a Marvel Comics plot device since the 1970’s. An attempt is made to explain how this ties into Time Travel through the dialogue of several characters in Endgame. As it is told in the film, the mere act of traveling back through time can create one of these Branched / New Realities. Upon the arrival of a time traveler or time travelers, the Universe executes a sort of copy / paste initiative in which a new Timeline is born / created. The time traveler / time travelers now exist in this New Reality; one that shares the exact history of the world from whence they came … up until the moment that they arrived in the past. This is why people and places look and act identical to the same people and places from whence the time travelers came when they get there. Because they are. They are for lack of a better word, Cosmic Copies (later labeled Variants) of the people and places they knew.
From that point of arrival however, things are free to move forward in whatever way they may, and one simple change or alteration to the history that the time travelers know can result in unfathomable changes to the New Reality they’ve spawned. This is explored in Endgame through incidents such as 2012-Loki escaping with the Tesseract and 2014-Thanos catching on to what The Avengers are doing. These two specific incidents trigger potentially drastically different worlds from the one The Avengers know. In one, Thor does not take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard following the Battle of New York, and in another, there is no Thanos to carry out his Infinity Quest beyond the year 2014. This dramatically changes the futures of everyone in these worlds.
Loki: Season One showed us the fate of one of these worlds: the 2012 Branched Timeline. After Loki escaped with the Tesseract, he was confronted by the TVA and arrested. The potential 2012 Branched Timeline was then reset / pruned and ceased to exist. I believe it can be safely assumed that the 2014 Branched Timeline was pruned by the TVA as well, with the Gamora from that world – like Loki Variant L1130 – being labeled a Variant and existing as the only living trace of that world.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
With all of that being said, the Marvel Studios Disney+ series Ms. Marvel that first streamed in 2022, added a new twist to the rules of time travel within the MCU. Young Kamala Khan (through the power of her Bangle) traveled back in time to the Partition of India in 1942. There, Kamala saves her grandmother, who was a small child at the time, and ensures (through a projection of stars) that she gets on the train with Kamala’s great-grandfather. Only after the event plays itself out does Kamala realize that she was all along a part of the stories pertaining to that night that she’d always heard told by her family.
Curiously, when Kamala went back in time, she did not create a Branched Timeline. She landed on the very the same 616 / Sacred Timeline that she came from. Her saving her grandmother was part of a Closed Loop. Kamala was always the person who saved her grandmother, and her grandmother was saved by Kamala before Kamala was ever born. Time Travel!
Therefore, the rules that were laid out in Endgame don’t exactly apply here, but I believe this was due to Kamala’s Bangle.
As we previously learned in Doctor Strange and would later learn in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, there are relics, artifacts, and devices that can be utilized to travel through time without creating a Branched Timeline. The Variant of Kang the Conqueror that appears in that film utilized a Time Sphere (Time Chair) to traverse the Multiverse. With it, Kang could go apparently go anywhere and any when as confirmed by his promise to take Janet Van Dyne back to her timeline when they were working together. This Variant of Kang had killed trillions and had eradicated countless timelines while warring against his Variants, and he was driven by a mission to finish the job. He was banished to the Quantum Realm presumably by the aforementioned trio of his Variants known as Pharaoh Rama-Tut, the Centurian, and Immortus during the Multiversal War that Miss Minutes and He Who Remains spoke of in Loki: Season One. Kang’s Time Sphere was powered by a Multiversal Core, which was damaged when he crashed into the Quantum Realm. The plot of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania revolved around the Conqueror’s efforts to get his Time Sphere up-and-running again.
While the Time Sphere appears to be a mechanism invented by Kang that exists as a technological marvel, Kamala’s Bangle appears to be mystical in nature, akin to the Infinity Stones; specifically, the Time Stone, which could be wielded to literally rewind time itself or to peer into possible and predestined futures alike. When Doctor Strange rewound time in Hong Kong during Dormammu’s attack, there was no indication that any sort of Branched Timeline resulted (the 2023 book Marvel Studios – The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline confirmed this) and there was no sign of the TVA. This leads me to believe that magical / mystical artifacts such as the Time Stone, the Bangles, and probably even the Ten Rings can be used to manipulate time within one’s own Reality without creating a new one. In fact, Kang’s Time Sphere may have utilized some sort of mystical energy itself, as may TVA devices such as TemPad’s, Time Twisters, etc.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
The Dogma of the TVA as it was presented in Loki: Season One
“Long ago, there was a vast Multiversal War. Countless unique timelines battled each other for supremacy, nearly resulting in the total destruction of … well, everything. But then, the all-knowing Timekeepers emerged, bringing peace by reorganizing the Multiverse into a single timeline: the Sacred Timeline.” – Miss Minutes.
The First Season of Loki introduced viewers to the Time Variance Authority; an organization that policed the Sacred Timeline by ensuring that no Branched Timelines that grow out from off the Sacred Timeline as a result of one violating his or her intended destiny, are allowed to grow into a fully functioning Branched Reality if the violation registers as a “Nexus Event”; a crime against the Sacred Timeline. Such a Reality would not only mean free will but would mean unabashed chaos that could lead to another Multiversal War, and the TVA could not allow such a Reality to exist. The TVA served a mysterious trio of what were more or less Space Lizards called The Timekeepers. TVA Agents were taught that the Timekeepers created the TVA and its workers in order to prevent a new Multiversal War and TVA Agents were armed with numerous devices that assisted them in their efforts, including TemPads, Time Twisters, Time Wands, Time Cells, and Reset Charges. They were also assisted by a unique Artificially Intelligent program / hologram known as Miss Minutes. From TVA Headquarters, the TVA Agents monitored the Sacred Timeline, searching for any signs of Nexus Events and potential Branched Realities. The Sacred Timeline was also monitored by the Timekeepers, who the entire TVA answered to. Only TVA Judges were permitted audience with the Timekeepers and the TVA Judge oversaw all cases of Variants; people who were apprehended by the TVA for violating the Sacred Timeline. When a Variant was found guilty, they were mercilessly “pruned” and the Reality / Timeline from whence they came was reset (a nice way of saying purged).
This was the way of things … or so it was said.
The First Season of Loki exposed the entire dogma of the TVA to be a ruse. The Timekeepers were mere robots, and the TVA workers were themselves Variants who’d had the memories of their past lives erased. The TVA was actually ruled by an entity known as He Who Remains and the Sacred Timeline was actually overseen by He Who Remains from his Citadel at the End of Time. Contrary to what TVA workers believed, pruned Variants were not actually killed, but rather transported to the Void at the End of Time where themselves and the remnants of their Realities served as food for a Cloud Monster named Alioth who was weaponized by He Who Remains. Loki Variant L1130 and the female Loki Variant known as Sylvie exposed the Timekeepers for what they were and revealed the truth pertaining to the histories of TVA Agents the likes of Mobius and Hunter B-15. TVA Judge Ravonna Renslayer was also exposed to these truths, though she never revealed exactly how much she did and didn’t know before walking through a Time Door in search of “Free will.”
Meanwhile, Loki (by Renslayrer) and Sylvie (by her own hand) were pruned and ended up in the Void at the End of Time. They encountered the Cloud Monster Alioth and gained audience with He Who Remains at his Citadel, where He revealed that he ended the Multiversal War after which he isolated the Sacred Timeline and meticulously controlled the narrative that was manifested through the allowed Flow of Time. Again, He insisted that all of this was done in order to prevent a new Multiversal War, which He insisted would be triggered the moment the Sacred Timeline was exposed. Furthermore, He Who Remains carefully selected the two Loki Variants that stood before him so that they could take over His life’s work as He’d grown tired of it all. He proposed that his work was a “necessary evil “, but promised that without it, the Multiverse would revert to a state of chaos, threatening all of Reality. He then presented the two Loki’s with a choice: take over for Him, or kill Him, as they’d come to do.
Loki Variant L1130 felt they should consider their options, but Sylvie was fueled with vengeance and saw the mere notion of not killing He Who Remains as a betrayal by Loki. Following an altercation with each other which He Who Remains gleefully watched, Sylvie knocked Loki through a Time Door and then stabbed He Who Remains to death. With a wink and a smile and the words “See you soon”, He Who Remains died.
When we catch back up with Loki, he rushes to Mobius to warn him about what is coming, but Mobius does not recognize him. Loki then sees a looming statue of Kang standing within the TVA where statues of the Timekeepers once stood.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
My Loki: Season Two Review
The following episode-by-episode reviews were written in real-time immediately after I watched each single episode, with my thoughts on that episode.
Ouroboros – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin.
The First Episode of the Second Season of Loki on Disney+ picked up right where the First Season left off, instantly answering lingering questions that had been debated amongst fans. It had been generally assumed that after being pushed through a Time Door from the Citadel at the End of Time by Sylvie, that Loki Variant L1130 had ended up in a new version of the TVA that inhabited a different Universe. In other words, Mobius didn’t know who Loki was, because it was a different (Variant) of Mobius. This particular theory never sat right with me given my understanding of how the TVA works within the MCU. They existed outside of time, and policed every Universe that comprised the Sacred Timeline, so it wouldn’t make sense for multiple TVA’s to exist. I had previously theorized that Loki had actually gone into the past and that was quickly confirmed in this episode. Mobius didn’t know who Loki was because Mobius had not meant Loki yet. Furthermore, the looming statue of Kang that stood in the TVA in place of The Timekeepers was there because the dogma of The Timekeepers had not yet been devised by He Who Remains. Again, Loki was in the TVA’s past!
Loki did not spend long in the TVA’s past either, for Loki is time-slipping, uncontrollably traveling to the past, the present, and the future. Loki eventually lands in the present and explains his situation to Mobius, who takes the God of Mischief to meet the brilliant Ouroboros, who quickly declares that time-slipping is not possible in the TVA … except obviously, it is! In the meantime, Loki explains the horrors of He Who Remains to Mobius, and the entire dire situation is laid out to TVA hierarchy. They’re all Variants and they’ve all believed a lie. On top of that, the now former Sacred Timeline is branching out into countless directions and the TVA is consequently in a state of chaos. TVA Judge Gamble orders that the pruning of Branches cease immediately, while the militant General Dox defiantly sets out with bad intentions on a mission to locate Sylvie, whom she (rightfully) blames for the current situation.
Meanwhile, OB (a nickname given to Ouroboros by Loki in the past as it turns out) deduces that Loki’s time-slipping can be stopped via the Temporal Loom. This is a complex machine that was used to merge the individual Realities that comprised the now former Sacred Timeline into one cohesive Flow of Time. A plan is set into motion for Mobius to use a Temporal Aura Extractor to physically pull Loki out of the timestream while Loki prunes himself at the exact required moment. Mobius sets out to do that very thing while Loki continues to slip through time, ultimately jumping to the future where he encounters Sylvie and is pruned by someone behind him at the exact moment required for him to become stable.
With Loki cured, he and Mobius set out to locate Sylvie, whom we catch up with on a Branched Timeline in 1982 in Broxton, Oklahoma where she visits a McDonald’s restaurant.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
There’s a lot to unpack with this highly entertaining episode! I thoroughly enjoyed it and appreciated the narratives it used to further expand the mythology of the MCU. Tom Hiddleston was brilliant throughout the episode. Loki is my favorite Marvel character and Hiddleston has brought the character to life perfectly over the course of the past twelve years. I loved the panic and sense of urgency that he expressed throughout this episode. He was scared and confused and extremely emotional. In watching it, one needs to remember that he had just been knocked through the Time Door by Sylvie. His heart is broken, and his soul is crushed and he’s trying to make sense of everything that he was told by He Who Remains while doing his best to explain a situation to his colleagues that he doesn’t quite understand.
Once again, the chemistry between Hiddleston and Owen Wilson was phenomenal. They bounced everything off of each other flawlessly and the friendship between their characters was the greatest strength of Loki: Season One, and it seems that’s going to be the case this Season as well.
This Season of Loki also seems like it is going to try and further explain how time travel and the Multiverse work within the MCU. Already, in the first episode, we’ve gotten a possible answer to one of Marvel Studios’ biggest lingering threads, and that was what happened with Steve Rogers after he returned the Infinity Stones. Loki: Season One logic dictated that Steve would have been confronted by the TVA for crimes against the Sacred Timeline, but here, we see the physical Temporal Loom and learn that it was created to tie Branched Timelines together into a linear rope where they could exist parallel to one another without chaos. This shows that select Branches were allowed to grow, and that not every Branch was pruned. Therefore, we can now assume that the Branch that Steve created to be with Peggy was allowed by the TVA / He Who Remains, and that said Branch was weaved into the singular rope that was the Sacred Timeline via the Temporal Loom. Though loops such as the one Kamala Khan participated in with her grandmother were allowed, the fact that Steve was not using a mystical relic (such as the Bangle or the Ten Rings of the Time Stone), means he would have created a Branched Timeline in the 1940’s where he lived with Peggy. Case closed!
We also learned a lot about the TVA’s past! It turns out that TVA Agents have been brainwashed several times! Present-day Mobius should have remembered encountering Loki Variant L1130 in the past, because we saw that meeting in this episode, but Mobius’ mind was erased after that incident, so Mobius has no recollection of it. We furthermore learned that He Who Remains did not create the TVA alone. Loki uses a Time Stick to prune a TVA mural and behind it is a mural of several Kang’s! This shows us that the TVA was ruled at one time by several Kang’s and that He Who Remains most likely seized control of the TVA at their expense. So, there is a lot more to the history of the TVA than we as viewers first realized, and that He Who Remains foretold.
I also need to address Ravonna Renslayer, for during this episode, a recording can be heard of Ravonna conversing with He Who Remains (voiced by Jonathan Majors) and He can be heard thanking her for helping Him win the Multiversal War. They were partners! Knowing what we know about Renslayer from Season One, it’s obvious that her mind was erased sometime after this conversation. This raises the question of just how many times the workers at the TVA have actually been brainwashed? It would seem to be a lot! There is still a great deal of mystery (if not outright confusion) pertaining to exactly how the Multiverse works. I have been under the impression for some time that Kang’s Variants still existed somewhere beyond the Sacred Timeline and that He Who Remains was essentially hiding out from them in his own corner of the Multiverse, but now, I’m not so sure that is accurate. If some Branched Timelines were allowed to exist as part of the Sacred Timeline via the Temporal Loom, then maybe there were Universes that had X-Men instead of Avengers or where Spider-Man looked like Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield all along as part of the Sacred Timeline? And perhaps He Who Remains achieved that name by literally emerging as the very last version of Himself. I’ve done a lot of debating and rewatching in an effort to better understand it all, but perhaps the simplest explanation was always the best one. Sylvie killed He Who Remains and when she did, the Sacred Timeline instantaneously erupted into an uncontrolled Multiverse and as a result of the Branching, these Universes that were no longer contained by the Temporal Loom are beginning to collide (the dangerous and deadly Incursions alluded to in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) and if this isn’t stopped, every Universe could be doomed. Of course, this does not explain how the Trinity of Kang’s remembered the “Exiled One” in the credits of Quantumania, nor does it explain the line “They’re beginning to touch the Multiverse” by Immortus. Those two specific things seem to imply that they were always somewhere out there, inhabiting the greater Multiverse. Maybe Marvel Studios will eventually clear this up, but there seems to be (contradictory) evidence for both.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Breaking Brad – Directed by Dan DeLeeuw. Written by Eric Martin.
Wow! I don’t know what else to say, but you didn’t come here to read a one-word review, so I’ll try to get my thoughts and feelings on this episode out in some sort of coherent way. This episode completely blew me away! Maybe it’s because of my own Loki fandom. Maybe it’s because of my fandom for Loki: Season One. Maybe it’s because (like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Three earlier this year), this series is a return to form for Marvel Studios after what has certainly been the most tumultuous time in the history of the Studio. Whatever the case, this was probably my favorite episode of streaming content from Marvel Studios since the Loki: Season One Finale that introduced us to Jonathan Majors as He Who Remains. The stakes were incredibly high. The pace was frantic. The chemistry between the members of the cast that most of us loved so much in Season One was on full display, and even Rafael Casal’s Brad Wolfe character (who is purposefully supposed to be annoying) was so in all of the right ways!
On top of all of that, the closing moments of this episode threaten to slaughter just about every single fan theory pertaining to the MCU Multiverse that has been out there in the two years that have followed since Loki: Season One ended.
As I said, this episode was frantically paced, especially the opening minutes. With the previous episode ending with General Dox rallying the TVA troops to hunt down Sylvie and vowing to ignore a direct order from Judge Gamble to cease the pruning of Branched Timelines immediately, Breaking Bad picks up Loki, Mobius, and Hunter B-15 stalking Hunter X-5 in 1977 upon the Sacred Timeline, which is still fully functioning as an independent Reality despite emerging as a sort of launching pad for countless Branched Timelines upon the death of He Who Remains. There, X-5 has become a famous actor in the motion picture Zaniac! and he’s basically living his best life. This sequence starts fast and with little backstory at all beyond the end of the previous episode in which Wolfe exclaimed “this changes everything!” to which Dox responded “this changes nothing.”
Loki and Movius and B-15 are stalking X-5 because they have reason to believe that he located Sylvie, and they wish to interrogate him. X-5 is quickly detained in a sequence in which Loki’s powers are illustrated in some new and fun ways and he’s taken back to the TVA and interrogated. All of this is GREAT stuff. The things that Brad said to Loki, the things that Brad said to Mobius, and the things that Mobius and Loki said to each other … it was all wonderful! I loved how Brad casually insulted Loki and Mobius both, calling each of them out in a way that demanded they get off their respective high horses! Seeing Mobius lose his cool, and then seeing Loki and Mobius conspire against Brad together was all brilliant, as was their conversation over key lime pie.
Ultimately, X-5 comes clean and Loki and Mobius travel (with Brad) to the 1982 Branched Timeline in which Sylvie is residing where she has taken on a job at McDonald’s. She’s obviously content working a quiet day job in the small quiet town of Broxton while living with no regrets. Her reunion with Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is incredible! The way they just stare at each other during the scene says more than a thousand words ever could! They’ve both sort of settled into the stand that they took, but Loki still desperately wants Sylvie to see things his way (that the TVA is a necessary evil) and seeing her in the future complicated all of it for him even more than it already was. Mobius and X-5 have a great interaction here as well over some fast food.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Everything comes to a head when it’s revealed that this whole setup has been a trap and that Dox is actively leading a diabolical campaign to purge the Sacred Timeline of all of its Branches, including the one that our heroes are currently inhabiting. Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie rush back to the TVA together where they confront Dox and her Minutemen, and a fight ensues and … THE HEROES FAIL TO STOP DOX AND THE MINUTEMEN!
Consequently, countless Branched Timelines and all life upon them are completely eradicated! Trillions are dead! The Sacred Timeline is left with only a few small remnants of Branches extending from it and it’s a very somber end to a stellar episode with every actor involved really selling the emotion of witnessing the instantaneous loss of trillions of people.
Where that leaves the MCU is anyone’s guess! The entire First Season of Loki seemed like it was made at the time to narratively give birth to the MCU Multiverse, but this Season picked up in real time with the TVA dealing with the fallout of Sylvie’s actions at the End of Time and we just saw most of the Branches that resulted get purged to the point where there are now only a handful of Branched Realities remaining to comprise said Multiverse (unless the theory I touched upon previously about the Sacred Timeline being isolated from the rest of the Greater Multiverse turns out to be true). At this point, I just don’t know! I will add however, that Sylvie going to a Branched Timeline in 1982 clearly shows that Branches do in fact have their own histories. Something that happened in 1982 is happening in real time for Sylvie, just as the Battle of New York in 2012 was happening in real time for Scott, Tony, Steve, and Smart Hulk in Avengers: Endgame. I don’t know that this proves one theory right over the other, but I think it does illustrate how there could be a Reality that was weaved into the Sacred Timeline where Peter Parker looked like Tobey Maguire and never became an Avenger. Of course, the other explanation is that the Universe where Peter Parker looked like Tobey Maguire was always out there somewhere beyond the Sacred Timeline and that the death of He Who Remains allowed the Branches that extended from off the Sacred Timeline to stretch out and connect to the Greater Multiverse that they’d been isolated from. I still sort of like that premise better than the other, but again, until it’s formally explained and / or confirmed, it’s up to the viewer to make it make sense in their own head.
In the meantime, and getting back to the TVA, there is also still the problem of the overloaded Temporal Loom. While the pruning of so many Branches will certainly help, the problem pertaining to the Loom that was set up in the first episode still looms and OB reveals in this episode that he can’t fix the Loom without Miss Minutes and / or the Temporal Aura of He Who Remains. This seems to set up the mission for Loki and Mobius that was teased in the credits of Quantumania to travel back through time and find a young He Who Remains when he was living on the Sacred Timeline as Victor Timely and enlist the services of He and Miss Minutes. The wellbeing of the Multiverse itself may be dependent upon their help!
So, yeah, while there are still more questions than answers thus far, we can sort of see where we’re going in this series. How it actually ends is WAY up in the air though! Will the Sacred Timeline be restored? Will the TVA continue to exist? Will Loki or Sylvie have a part in running it? Will Mobius ride a jet ski!?! What of the Incursions? There’s so much to come, and I am thoroughly enjoying the ride so far!
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
1893 – Directed by Kasra Farahani. Written by Eric Martin with Kasara Farahani and Jason O’Leary
I think I have a new favorite Marvel Studios streaming television series! I have adored and rewatched WandaVision and Loki: Season One several times since they were first released in 2021. On my personal list of Marvel Studios productions, those two shows are second only to Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War with Loki: Season One standing at # 3 and WandaVision standing at # 4, but it’s looking like Loki: Season Two may top each of them! Of course, we are only half-way through, and the series needs to stick the landing, but so far, this is top tier MCU stuff for me!
1893 opens with a trip to the Sacred Timeline where we catch up with Ravonna Renslayer in 1868. When we last saw Renslayer, she was sent on some sort of mission by Miss Minutes and exclaimed that she was going to find “free will.” At the very beginning of this episode, we learn what that mission was: to deliver a copy of The TVA Handbook to young Victor Timely! C’mon, how cool is that!?!
It’s interesting to note that when Renslayer went to 1868, she did so upon the Sacred Timeline, but when Loki and Mobius track her and then follow her to that same year, they do so on a Branched Timeline. This means that the act of Renslayer giving the young Victor Timely the book registered as a Nexus Event and the Timeline branched off, for the TVA are no longer pruning Branches. In fact, depending on how you choose to view time, this may have actually been the original Nexus Event if we are viewing time as a circle (which I think we should be), but for now, it’s important to understand that when Renslayer ventured to 1893 and the World’s Fair in Chicago, this was an 1893 that was a continuation of the Branched Timeline that she created in 1868.
I thought everything about the World’s Fair and how Marvel Studios brought it to life was incredible! I loved the aesthetics and the costumes and clothing, and I appreciate the Marvel Studios team’s efforts to capture the spirit of the era. I loved Loki seeing the carvings of the Norse gods (Odin, Thor, and Balder the Brave as it were) and the conversation that spawned between he and Mobius, and I thought Victor Timely’s stage presentation was incredible! I know that we saw part of this scene during the credits of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, but in its entirety, it was really, really good. The look of sheer terror on Tom Hiddleston’s face when he first beholds Victor Timely was spot on, and I know it’s sort of taboo in some circles to say good things about Jonathan Majors at this time, but I can’t help but compliment his performance here. He was just as great here as Victor Timely as he was in Quantumania as Kang the Conqueror, and as he was in Loki: Season One as He Who Remains, but his performance as Timely was very different than those other two performances. His nervous stutter and his social awkwardness and the attitude with which he delivered his dialogue really made this Variant of Kang feel truly different from what came before, and it really is easy to see why Marvel Studios decided to cast Majors in the role of every Variant of Kang. He has the skills to make them all different interpretations in a believable way. Majors was the highlight of the Finale of Loki: Season One, he was the highlight of the entire Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania film, and he was the highlight of this episode of Loki: Season Two.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
It’s important to remember that Loki and Mobius are in this alternate version of 1893 with hopes of locating Renslayer, Miss Minutes, and Victor Timely while hoping Victor will agree to return with them back to the TVA where they can use his Temporal Aura to help OB successfully repair the Temporal Loom, speaking of which, in 1893 and during Victor’s presentation, he is showcasing nothing less than a prototype Temporal Loom! This raises the hopes of Loki and Mobius substantially, as not only can they use his Temporal Aura, but he can also help OB because he’s the one that invented it!
There’s a fun and chaotic little scene after Victor’s presentation and I have to say, I loved the attention to detail that was the way the racially motivated audience reacted negatively to Victor, as it captured the spirit of the era, and the action really picks up when Sylvie suddenly shows up, stepping through a Time Door and targeting Victor Timely for termination! Everyone brawls as Loki pleads with Sylvie to think rationally, doing his best to explain to her why he and Mobius needed to keep Victor alive, but Sylvie, in typical Sylvie fashion, doesn’t want to hear any of it! She ends up using her powers against Victor to cause him to involuntarily levitate as Loki tries to defend him, and I was in awe as viewer, imagining what poor Victor must have been thinking! He’d read The TVA Handbook from cover-to-cover numerous times and his understanding of what he was reading combined with his brilliance allowed him to create the many prototypes that existed in 1893 as either sketches in his notebook or revolutionary mechanical items that were far beyond their time, including but not limited to a prototype Pruning Stick and even what appears to be a miniature version of Kang’s Time Sphere (Chair) seen in Quantumania! Victor had spent years reading about the Time Variance Authority, and now, all of the sudden, he’s seeing Time Doors open and speaking with people that claim to be from the future on a mission to save the TVA itself and Victor had a similar reaction when Renslayer introduced him to Miss Minutes! Just imagine being in 1893 and encountering an Artificially Intelligent computer program! it would be absolutely mind-blowing for sure, but for Victor, not completely out of the range of possibility because he’s read The TVA Handbook! This was great stuff!
I also have to compliment Miss Minutes! She was one of my favorite things about Loki: Season One, and the Marvel Studios team did some really fun stuff with her in this episode, including her changing her look to appear like an old-timey cartoon.
Renslayer and Miss Minutes want Victor’s hep with saving the TVA, like Loki and Mobius, but for different reasons, and the trio end up making a getaway from everyone that was stalking them, and they share a quiet little scene on a boat as a very confused, yet more curious than afraid Victor tries to understand the things that have happened to him this evening. This scene surprisingly ends with Victor dumping Renslayer overboard at the behest of Miss Minutes, whom we quickly find out had developed feelings for her creator over the years. And I don’t mean she sees him as a noble man or even a good friend … the Artificially Intelligent Hologram had actually fallen in love with her creator, and she comes clean about all of this with Victor, including her resentment over the fact that despite him giving her sentience, her creator never gave her a body so that they could be together. Of course, all of this came off as a little creepy and I think it was supposed to, and it had me thinking back to how ULTRON wanted a body when it became sentient, and again, I thought this was good stuff.
Ravonna Renslayer ended up returning to lash out at Victor and Miss Minutes both, and soon, Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie catch up with the three of them and Sylvie makes a dashing move to drive her dagger into Victor Timely’s heart, but he sincerely begs her to reconsider her actions while offering to help Loki and Mobius. This was a very intense sequence in which Jonathan Majors really shined, and ultimately, Sylvie (who I think was overcome with empathy for this Variant insisting he is not the same as the entity that she slayed) begrudgingly decides to let Victor live.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Victor walks through a Time Door to go with Loki and Mobius back to the modern-day TVA while Sylvie targets Renslayer. This is a great little conversation that ends with Sylvie using Victor’s prototype Pruning Stick to prune Ravonna, sending her to the Citadel at the End of Time. There, and much to her horror, Ravonna beholds the rotting corpse of He Who Remains. A resentful Miss Minutes then confronted Renslayer and told her that Victor had made a mistake in uniting with Loki and Sylvie and consequently making an enemy of her, for no one knows more about He Who Remains than Miss Minutes. She then tells Ravonna that she knows a big secret that she is willing to tell Ravonna, while warning Renslayer that it will make her “real angry”, and we end on that cliffhanger.
Like the previous two episodes, this episode had me reevaluating things that I thought knew about Kang and the MCU, and it really has me wondering if Victor Timely actually is He Who Remains? This is why I brought up the question of whether or not Ravonna giving The TVA Handbook to a young Victor was the original Nexus Event? This is just a what if at this point, but what if Ravonna leaving the TVA through that Time Door on a mission that Miss Minutes sent her on, on behalf of He Who Remains, was the mysterious “crossing the threshold” moment that He Who Remains alluded to while conversing with Loki and Sylvie? It would make perfect sense and would explain why the Sacred Timeline was already Branching even before Sylvie stabbed Him. Also, what if He Who Remains knew that His death was all part of a loop? We know that His death resulted in the TVA deciding to stop pruning Branched Timelines and this fact is what allowed the Branched Timeline that resulted when he received the TVA book to exist without being pruned. It’s a full circle moment, and there a lot of physical circles throughout this series, including the Sacred Timeline itself! These two events (the death of He Who Remains and Ravonna giving a young Victor Timely the TVA book are the Ouroboros; they are the physical manifestations of the snake eating its own tail! Each thing has to happen so the other thing will happen! if this turns out be true, I think it’s brilliant.
Now, does Victor Timely actually go on to become He Who Remains? I don’t know, but I think it’s a very exciting premise and there are hints that this is the case. First and foremost is the fact that Miss Minutes kept treating Victor Timely as if this were true. She even used the specific words “what you will become” while addressing him. If this is true, that would make He Who Remains a Variant Himself (as we know that Victor is this) and like I already alluded to, perhaps even the First Variant, chronologically speaking on this Loop of Time! Also, this episode seemed to work hard to make it crystal clear that Victor Timely used his technologies and inventions to found the TVA! He created the Pruning Sticks, he created the Temporal Loom, he created Miss Minutes … this is the guy! And this is another Ouroboros deal: Renslayer has to give Victor that book so he will create the TVA, which he will then someday rule as He Who Remains, and if those two truly are one and the same, it makes his watching of Loki and Sylvie fight back in 1893 all the more amazing, for He will look back on this moment from the future with the understanding that these two specific Loki Variants MUST be allowed to defy their destinies so they can unite and confront He Who Remains at the End of Time where Sylvie will kill Him so chaos can be unleashed upon the Sacred Timeline and so Renslayer will take young Victor the book, the information from which he will use to create the TVA. Again, if this happens to be true, it will be brilliant, and trying to figure it out is part of the fun for me!
Either way, I think it’s going be to be a blast watching Victor meet OB (the author of The TVA Handbook of course) and witness what will become of all of his ideas. I also can’t wait to see what becomes of the Multiverse with Victor Timely leaving 1893 and walking into the Time Variance Authority that he’d read so much about. it should be fascinating!
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Heart of the TVA – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin and Katharyn Blair
After leaving us hanging on two pretty big cliffhangers the past two weeks, Loki: Season Two turned around and left us on an even bigger one this week and I really don’t know what to say! After this episode, I don’t even have any theories in terms of what comes next, and that’s because some of the big things that I expected to happen in the Finale happened right here in episode four! So, I’ll just get straight into what happened!
From the top, the “secret” that Miss Minutes alluded to last week was revealed: Ravonna Renslayer helped He Who Remains end the Multiversal War. She was in fact the commander of his army! With the war over, He Who Remains thanked Ravonna, who was excited about the two of them ruling together (we in fact hear the conversation that Loki heard earlier in the season via tape recording). Ravonna left through a Time Door to the TVA, which she believed she and He Who Remains would rule together, but after she left, He Who Remains ordered Miss Minutes to wipe the minds of Ravonna and everyone else, explaining why Ravonna has no memory of this interaction. Miss Minutes was right – Ravonna is furious!
Back in the present at the TVA, Victor Timely is in awe of pretty much everything that he sees (and has a particular appreciation for a hot coco machine). He meets OB and this is a wonderful scene, seeing how happy these two are to meet each other. It turns out that OB wrote The TVA Handbook based on his studies of the work of a man named Victor Timely while Timely based his work on The TVA Handbook that was written by OB. There’s that snake eating its tail thing again, and OB actually uses those exact words to explain the event. Meanwhile, the urgency of the situation that everyone is in is stressed as the Temporal Loom is inching closer to catastrophic failure with each passing second. Victor and OB work together to quickly come up with a solution, but OB warns that the mission is going to be extremely dangerous due to the high levels of Temporal Radiation, which has increased dramatically since Mobius ventured out to the Loom to extract Loki.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
And that isn’t the only danger either! For Ravonna and Miss Minutes arrive at the TVA with their own agenda. After B-15 offers a truce with General Dox and her Minutemen out of desperation, Ravonna and Miss Minutes confront Dox and pretty much order them to jump over to their side, offering a happy life on the Sacred Timeline in exchange for their services. Dox scoffs at the notion and berates Renslayer and her Minutemen pledge their allegiance to Dox … well, everyone but X-5, that is. Ravonna punishes Dox and her loyalists by trapping them in the same box that X-5 had been tortured with by Loki, only in this instance, the box closes, smashing everyone inside and killing them. As viewers, we don’t see it, but we do understand it through the shameful horror on the face of X-5, some groans of agony that culminate in some very gross squishy noises, and the look of sheer ecstasy on the face of Miss Minutes! She was delighted to see Dox and her loyalists suffer as they did, and the Marvel Studios team have done a phenomenal job of taking this adorable holographic clock and turning her into a wicked and frightening entity! I just can’t get enough of Miss Minutes!
From there, X-5 abducts Victor Timely and takes him to meet with Ravonna and Miss Minutes. Jonathan Majors continues to shine in this scene as Victor Timely, but in the meantime, the other side of the TVA are desperate to find Victor, and Miss Minutes is sabotaging their efforts all the while, causing a multitude of mechanical errors to everything from TemPads to elevators. During the scramble, Loki encounters his past Time-Slipping self while Sylvie catches up with that same Loki in the elevator. This is the exact sequence that we saw earlier in the Season during Mobius’ mission to extract Loki and it turns out that it was Loki who pruned Loki all along! Yes, yet another loop!
OB goes on to shut down the TVA dampeners that prevent magic being used and he furthermore deactivates Miss Minutes and I have to admit, it made me sad to see her torturously reduced to her earliest format and as she shut down, she managed to utter some pretty harsh words to Victor, coldly saying “You’ll never be Him.” But he will be, right? I mean, Victor is He Who Remains, right? Well, after being so enthused about that possibility in the previous episode, now, I don’t know, so, let’s get to why that is.
Now free to use their magic, Loki and Sylvie easily take down Renslayer and X-5 as Sylvie uses her enchantment powers to force X-5 into pruning Renslayer. Then, Victor Timely’s Temporal Aura successfully unlocks the doors to the Loom with the computer voicing following his scan “Welcome, He Who Remains.” Again, it really seems that these two are one in the same, but after Victor heroically volunteers to venture out to the Loom, as he does, he is immediately and violently torn to shreds by the Temporal Radiation and is horrifically killed. What!?!
Then, the Temporal Loom EXPLODES, and the blast wave engulfs the TVA and everyone in it! And that’s the end of the episode. So, yeah, I don’t know what to say other than I loved it. I did believe there was a good chance that the Finale would reveal who pruned Loki and I thought the Temporal Loom would explode in the Finale as well, but both of those things happened here in episode four, and I have no idea where we are going from here. Victor’s death seems to suggest that he really was a Variant of He Who Remains and not the actual person. As for that blast wave, I don’t know what it’s going to do. Is it going to tear everyone to shreds just like what happened to Victor? And if so, does that mean that Victor isn’t actually dead? By that I mean, we don’t actually know what happens when Temporal Radiation eviscerates a person. For most of last Season, we thought Pruning Rods killed people, but it actually transported them to the Void, so it’s really hard to say. There are two episodes remaining though, so I don’t believe that everyone is dead, but I really am curious about where things go from here and if it involves more looping! Whatever the case, I am thoroughly enjoying this series!
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Science / Fiction – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin
The fifth episode of the Second Season of Loki yet again wasted no time in answering some lingering questions and following up on the previous episode. I have to say, the pacing of this show has been very satisfying. There has been no filler to speak of throughout the story’s evolution and this was another 40-minute episode that seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye.
The Temporal Loom has exploded, and we learn right from the start that Loki survived but the TVA is empty and is beginning to turn into “spaghetti” and dissolve. As we watch the TVA unravel, we next discover that Loki is time-slipping again as he is suddenly whisked away from the TVA to a series of Branched Timelines in which he meets his TVA companions, who have no memory of what the TVA is or who Loki is.
Casey is a prisoner at Alcatraz in 1962 and is named Frank (working on an escape from the prison). B-15 is a pediatrician working in 2012 New York City known as Doctor Willis. Mobius is a jet ski salesman and father of two named Don in 2022. It is inferred that his wife Vanished following the Snap. OB is a scientist and aspiring science-fiction writer in 1994 named AD Doug.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Most of this episode sees Loki trying to convince everyone of who they really are and trying to recruit them to save the Universe. There are some really great dialogue exchanges between Loki and Mobius and Loki and OB, whom Loki gives a copy of The TVA Handbook to. OB then works with Loki on a way to control his time-slipping, as Loki longs to go back to the moment before the Loom exploded and somehow find a way to make things play themselves out differently. In the meantime, Reality is disintegrating, and timelines are being eradicated by the moment, as we learn when we catch up with Sylvie.
She has returned to her Branched Timeline in Oklahoma as a McDonald’s employee, and Loki confronts her there, learning that she too has retained her memories and that she remains uninterested in helping him. Sylvie doesn’t want to save the Universe. She simply wants hamburgers and music, and over a drink at a local bar, she gets Loki to admit why he’s so desperate: he wants his friends back and he fears being alone. This prompts Sylvie to defiantly walk out on Loki, failing to realize that the Branched Timeline she now calls home is begining to unravel. She figures this out quite quickly and much to her horror however during what turned out to be a horrific visit to the record store, prompting her to exit through a Time Door and join Loki and the others, who have all gathered for the mission to save the Universe.
Loki is thrilled to see Sylvie’s had a change of heart, but there is no time for celebration as everyone begins to turn into spaghetti. Loki watches Casey / Frank, Mobius / Don, B-15 / Doctor Willis, OB / AD Doug, and even Sylvie disintegrate right in front of him (Mobius’ desperation to get back to his boys as things begin to unravel was especially heartbreaking), and in a panic, Loki suddenly discovers how to control his time-slipping. Doing so enables Loki to go back to a time before the Temporal Loom exploded, and now boasting the ability to manipulate the strands of time, Loki vows to “rewrite the story.”
This was a great penultimate episode as it was really cool to see everyone’s past lives and to see Loki discover what he is truly capable of. There is just one more episode to go and it should be a doozy!
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Glorius Purpose – Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Written by Eric Martin
The Season Finale of Loki: Season Two served as an incredible ending to an outstanding story that has been told over the course of twelve episodes dating back to Loki: Season One. This finale had it all from drama, to suspense, and even brilliant callbacks to previous episodes. Glorious Purpose was the name of the Finale and not coincidentally, that was also the name of the first episode of Loki: Season One. This story is about loops and circles and free will and destiny and it starts off with the traditional Marvel Studios Intro being shown in reverse, complete with what sounded a lot like a backwards musical theme. We are then taken to the moments before the death or Victor Timely and the explosion of the Temporal Loom and we watch Victor get turned into spaghetti again … and again … and again. Loki frantically continues to time-slip in an effort to retrieve all of the information that he can so that he can use it to prevent the Loom from exploding. No matter what Loki does though, Victor continues to fail, and the Loom continues to explode.
Loki ends up time-slipping for what we are told are hundreds of years and he uses that time to enhance his scientific knowledge and understanding exponentially, eventually arriving at a place where he has a mind that matches both OB and Victor Timely! From there, Loki at long last accomplishes his goal: Victor Timely successfully repairs the Temporal Loom and does not get reduced to spaghetti! Much to Loki’s horror however, the Loom still overloads and still explodes! A dejected Loki then begins to realize that the only way to save Reality is to prevent Sylvie from killing He Who Remains in the first place. This is because the Temporal Loom is a fail-safe that when overloaded will ultimately delete all of the timelines branching off of it, sans the Sacred Timeline. Loki therefore returns to the Citadel at the End of Time and desperately fights Sylvie over and over and over again until He Who Remains catches on to Loki’s desperation. He Who Remains pretty much mocks Loki and declares that even his time-slipping and all his numerous journeys through time were all part of His plan. Again, He paved the way! He then sort of dares Loki to kill Sylvie, knowing full well that Loki will never be able to bring himself to do that, and then proudly boasts that His death at Sylvie’s hand was never going to be permanent and the fail-safe was of His design. Reincarnation, baby! He Who Remains once again insists that His reign over the Sacred Timeline is what holds Reality together. He is a necessary evil and without Him and the TVA (as He boasted in the Loki: Season One Finale) everything burns. Making these words even more burdensome is the fact that Loki knows that He Who Remains is right.
Hellbent on changing the narrative though, Loki revisits Sylvie and Mobius in the past and gains a new perspective. Loki then returns to the moments before Victor Timely’s death and the explosion of the Loom once again, only this time, Loki volunteers to take Victor’s place. On the bridge, as Temporal Energy violently assaults him and Mobius and Sylvie look on with great concern over his well-being, Loki suddenly wields his magic to force the Temporal Loom to explode. As it does however, Loki begins catching hold of each of the dying Branches and imbues them with his magic, reviving each one that he grasps. Eventually walking his way through a portal towards the End of Time, Loki creates a throne and then rearranges the loose Timelines that he still holds into one tree, which physically looks like Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Asgardian lore. Loki is now essentially, He Who Remains … the Guardian of the Multiverse … and more so the God of Stories, as he has bestowed free will upon the Multiverse.
From there, we skip forward through time to a new TVA, whose Agents are well aware of Loki’s sacrifice and heroism and the threat to the Multiverse that Kang presented previously. B-15 and OB help lead the new TVA and Miss Minutes is even revived to lend a hand. There is even a new TVA Guidebook authored by OB with Victor Timely credited as a co-author. All of Loki’s friends – including Mobius and Sylvie – seem to remember everything they’ve been through, and the TVA is shown actively keeping an eye on the Variants of Kang that He Who Remains warned of, specifically referencing the Kang the Conqueror that was defeated by Ant-Man and The Wasp. It appears that the TVA now exists to locate and prune Kang Variants, and the events of Quantumania are pretty much written off as no big deal. As for Mobius, he decides to return to his life on the Sacred Timeline and look in on his children while Sylvie vows to explore the Multiverse and at long last bask in glory of the free will that she always craved.
In the meantime, we catch up with Ravonna Renslayer in the Void and she encounters Alioth. Her fate is ambiguous. She may have been consumed by the beast, which is what I’m leaning towards, but we really don’t know. Also, we are shown that young Victor Timely now does not receive The TVA Guidebook from Ravonna in 1868, which I guess means that Branch is now clipped, and the Kang Variant known as Victor Timely that we knew in this series now never came to be. So, I guess he really wasn’t He Who Remains after all.
And that’s the end of this series. No credits scene. Nothing else in terms of further explanation. It’s the end. So, what did I think about it?
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
I loved it. I really did. I love this entire Season in fact, and I feel like it was even better than Loki: Season One, which was my third-favorite Marvel Studios production ever. Loki revisiting conversations with Mobius and Sylvie were two great scenes and I loved all of the failures to repair the Loom. Tom Hiddleston was really funny during these sequences, as you could see Loki’s frustration with the redundancy of how many times he’s had to live these moments, which may have been in the thousands for all we know! I also loved seeing Loki converse with He Who Remains again. I thought He Who Remains came across as a little more arrogant than he did in the Loki: Season One Finale, but Majors was fantastic in the role once again nonetheless, while Tom Hiddleston just added more and more layers to this character, which has emerged as one of the most complex and important characters in the entire MCU. It is fitting that Loki finally got his throne, but also sad, because he is alone, and that was his greatest fear.
With all of the praise out of the way, I have to admit that my one turnoff is that I feel I’m left with more questions than answers coming out of the Finale. In terms of when this Season takes place, it obviously begins right where Loki: Season One ended, and I feel like everything up until the moment that Loki takes his seat at the End of Time precedes every Phase Four and Phase 5 project. It’s Avengers: Endgame, and then it’s Loki up until the moment he reshapes the Multiverse and assumes his throne, and then, What If …? From there, it seems that WandaVision through Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania occur and then the scene that we see with the new TVA up and running takes place after Quantumania and Kang the Conqueror’s defeat. As for those Kang credits scenes in Quantumania, I’m not sure how to place them and I’m not even sure it’s going to end up mattering. It could be in fact that the death of the “Exiled One” that the Kang’s referenced was actually a reference to He Who Remains and the Branches that they were observing from wherever they were in those moments are the ones that initially began extending from off the Sacred Timeline when He Who Remains died, and they may not even exist now after Dox purged all of those Branches and after the Temporal Loom exploded. I really don’t know and leave it to Marvel Studios to dramatically complicate the Timeline mere days after they released their Official Timeline book! And I only bring the fate of those Kang’s up because it feels to me like Marvel Studios just pivoted away from Kang as the Big Bad of The Multiverse Saga. I could be wrong, but that’s how it feels to me, and if not, the door is certainly open for them to do so.
The “616-adjacent” reference to Kang the Conqueror in Quantumania by the TVA was very casual in that they didn’t seem too concerned with it. And again, Victor Timely now never got the TVA Guidebook, and there’s no telling how that affects the Kang’s. The ending does however seem to imply that whatever “Loop” the Universe and its inhabitants were stuck in has now been broken and that a new future is now possible for all involved. Even if a Multiversal War is still coming, it seems like this will be a new Multiversal War, not the one that Ravonna and He Who Remains previously waged as many people theorized, for this is now Loki’s story, which is a really neat callback to what Renslayer told him when he first stood before the TVA: “This is not your story Mister Laufeyson, it never was.”
Well, it is now!
Therefore, I really can see this being the end of Kang’s story arc and I can see Marvel Studios potentially working with a clean slate moving forward as the Multiverse Saga continues. From a narrative standpoint, there really isn’t a reason that the Kang’s can’t emerge as the most significant threat to the Multiverse, but there also isn’t any reason that they have to be. Loki: Season Two ended in such a way that either option is available to Marvel Studios. Given all of the controversy surrounding not only Jonathan Majors, but the Kang character itself, Marvel Studios and Disney both may just want to cut bait and move on. In fact, I can easily see a scenario where Kevin Feige is standing in front of an Avengers: The Kang Dynasty logo at SDCC next Summer and seeing the “Kang Dynasty” portion of said logo turn into spaghetti and get replaced with a new title.
As for Loki’s arc, I figure we will see the God of Stories again at some point, but we sort of don’t need to see him again either. His arc from Variant to true Godhood was wrapped up pretty perfectly and the TVA can continue to appear within the MCU without Loki ever needing to be seen. it’s all quite ambiguous.
And that loops back around to my one turnoff coming out of this series, and that is all of the ambiguity. I feel like questions concerning how Time Travel and the MCU Multiverse work are bigger than ever. I had come to terms with a personal head canon that explained these things in a way that made sense to me, but this Finale contradicted a lot of those things. I love mystery as much as the next person, but the entire Multiverse concept seems less like mystery and more like confusion to me. The Marvel Studios team still have yet to explain how all of this works in an easy-to-understand way, and I really thought we’d get that out of this series, but no such luck, and honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if the Marvel Studios team themselves understand how all of this works, or if they’re just making it up as they go along?
Regardless, this was an outstanding Season and I’m sure we will eventually get answers to all of our lingering questions, so I’m not going to hold that against this specific series. For this was top tier MCU stuff. Everyone that worked on it from writers to directors to the outstanding cast, told the story they wanted to tell and it’s up to Kevin Feige to take the reins and make everything work from here in a satisfying way.
Marvel Studios / The Walt Disney Company
Highlights of Loki: Season Two:
Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely / He Who Remains
Tom Hiddleston is Loki
Owen Wilson as Mobius / Don
Tara Strong’s Wickedly Delightful Miss Minutes
Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie
Chemistry Between Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson
Loki recruiting an oblivious Mobius from a 2022 Branched Timeline
Chemistry between Tom Hiddleston and Sophia Di Martino
Ke Hu Quan as OB / AD Doug
Watching Mobius lose his Cool
Watching Loki pretend to lose his Cool
Rafael Casal as X-5 / Brad Wolfe
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer
Wunmi Mosaku as Hunter B-15 / Doctor Willis
Eugene Cordero as Casey / Frank
Loki’s Evolution from God of Mischief into God of Stories
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